Blues Moments in Time...

This episode traces the powerful crossroads of February 20—from Frederick Douglass’s passing in 1895 and the rise of the blues under Jim Crow, to the electric defiance of the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. We jump to 1962, when Lightning Hopkins improvised a blues tribute as John Glenn orbited Earth, and spotlight key February 20 birthdays that shaped the genre. A date that proves the blues doesn’t just remember history—it reports it, responds to it, and plays a little louder every time.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 19th captures the blues in motion—from global Black consciousness to the electrified sound of mid‑century Chicago and the roar of arena rock. We begin in 1919, when W.E.B. Du Bois convenes the first Pan‑African Congress in Paris, laying the intellectual groundwork for the New Negro movement and building the cultural confidence that helped open the recording industry to Black artists like Mamie Smith just a year later.

The date also intersects with World War II and the “Double V” campaign. On February 19, 1945, as U.S. forces land on Iwo Jima, Black Marines fight abroad while demanding dignity at home. Returning veterans refuse Jim Crow and head north, fueling the Great Migration and transforming the blues from rural folk expression into an electrified urban shout.

That same day in Chicago, Big Bill Broonzy records with Big Maceo and Buster Bennett, capturing the “Bluebird beat”—a polished, swinging bridge between Delta roots and the amplified power soon to define Muddy Waters’ era.

We also mark the birth of Mississippi’s Sam Myers in 1936, a drummer‑turned‑harmonica powerhouse whose voice carried the stark truths of life and death, and the 1980 passing of AC/DC’s Bon Scott, a rocker whose shouting, 12‑bar swagger showed just how far the blues could travel.

February 19th stands as a snapshot of transition—intellectual, political, and musical—showing how the blues moves from Paris to Chicago to global stages without ever losing its pulse.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 18th pulls together moral resistance, civil rights sacrifice, and some of the most important turning points in modern Black music. We start in 1688 in Germantown, Pennsylvania, where a small group of Quakers draft the first formal protest against slavery in the English colonies—a quiet but radical act that lights the torch of moral resistance at the heart of the blues. Nearly three centuries later, in 1965, Alabama activist Jimmie Lee Jackson is shot while protecting his family during a protest in Marion; his death becomes the spark for the Selma to Montgomery marches and helps push the blues toward a harder, electrified edge that matches the violence of the times.

Musically, February 18th is a Big Bang date. In 1959, Ray Charles records “What’d I Say,” tearing down the wall between the church and the dance hall and effectively inventing soul music by fusing gospel fervor with blues grit. Eleven years later, the Allman Brothers Band cut “Statesboro Blues,” electrifying a 1920s country blues tune for the rock generation and proving the blues is a living language that can cross time, race, and genre.

We also mark the births of two foundational voices: Lonnie Johnson, who essentially invents the modern guitar solo and shows the instrument can sing like a human voice, and Irma Thomas, the “Soul Queen of New Orleans,” whose records have carried her city’s joy and sorrow for decades. The day also holds the passing of Snooks Eaglin in 2009—the blind New Orleans “human jukebox” whose limitless repertoire and funky, bluesy guitar web embodied the idea that this music is lived, not just played.

February 18th stands as a reminder that the blues is a running report from the front lines—rooted in protest, reshaped by innovation, and carried forward by artists who turn suffering into soul.Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 17th pulls together opera stages, protest streets, and Texas roadhouses into one long blues story about dignity and defiance. We start with Marian Anderson, born this day in 1902, whose exclusion from Constitution Hall and unshakable poise turned her into a symbol of Black artistry that would not be silenced—a core truth at the heart of the blues. Then we move to 1942 and the birth of Huey P. Newton, co‑founder of the Black Panther Party, marking a shift from asking to demanding and helping push the music from acoustic back‑porch laments into electrified, militant soul blues.

On the recording side, February 17th catches the blues in conversation with other genres: Bessie Smith in 1927 cutting “After You’ve Gone,” where the Empress of the Blues meets jazz head‑on, and Bob Dylan in 1966 tracking “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” a counterculture nod that rock and roll is riding on Memphis shoulders.

The date is also thick with Texas grit: drummer and songwriter Doyle Bramhall, the heartbeat behind Stevie Ray Vaughan’s sound, and Lou Ann Barton, whose voice feels like a Texas roadhouse at 2 a.m.—sweaty, fiery, and absolutely alive.

We close with two losses that signal the end of eras: Thelonious Monk in 1982, whose angular jazz piano was still built on a blues skeleton, and Henry Gray in 2020, Howlin’ Wolf’s longtime pianist and one of the last living links to the golden age of Chicago blues. February 17th stands as a microcosm of the music itself—birth and loss, opera and juke joints, quiet dignity and raised fists—all carried on a twelve‑bar spine.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.

February 16 reveals the blues as a record of survival—a music born from laws designed to silence Black voices and sustained by generations who turned lived experience into song. In this episode of Blues Moments in Time, we trace the impact of Missouri’s 1847 literacy ban, the rise of oral tradition, and Frederick Douglass’s leadership at the Freedman’s Bank, whose collapse echoed the broken promises that shaped so many blues themes.

We explore Bessie Smith’s 1923 recording that saved Columbia Records, Fleetwood Mac’s 1968 debut that proved the blues had become a global language, and the legacies of Bill Doggett, Otis Blackwell, and Brownie McGhee—artists who carried the music from greasy organ grooves to rock and roll swagger to the pure “wood and wire” of Piedmont blues. February 16 stands as a reminder that the blues is both a survival tool and a universal truth.

Hosted by: Kelvin Huggins

Presented by: The Blues Hotel Collective - your home for EVERYTHING BLUES.

Website: https://www.theblueshotel.com.au/

Keep the blues alive.

© 2026 The Blues Hotel Collective.